We decided to start the year in FUN!

Last year, our good friend, Min Swan of White House Celebrations, made it her resolution to have more fun and it’s just one teeny tiny part of Min’s philosophy that continues to inspire us. We love being on the Sunshine Coast and we are living healthier, happier lives here, and attracting work that we love doing, so it makes sense to make a commitment to continuing to have fun in 2013. Like attracts like, right?!

With some very clever collaborators, including the awesome team at See Plus Function Centre in Mooloolaba, we’ve come up with a dinner theatre show that is JUST FOR FUN! It’s naughty, bawdy, bold and you’ll love it! It’s a great, totally fun way to start the year!

The Pirate Show stars some of your favourite Sunshine Coast performers, including

Sam Coward

Simon Denver

Glen Wiles

Sarah McMahon

Darren Heskes

Howard Tampling

James Allen

Kelsie Rimmer

Stephanie Fisher

Nina Van der Plas

And occasionally, when the need arises, yours truly. That’s right. I’m playing the role of Understudy in this one.

The band is terrific, the songs are well-known and of course you’ll get to sing along…or walk the plank! You choose! Audience participation is optional!

In addition to a great show to enjoy with a bunch of friends and family members, See Plus Function Centre are serving their famous seafood platters (and a glass of house wine on arrival!). If you’re a non-seafood eater, like my little brother, whose intolerance was discovered on the night of my wedding ten years ago (long story!), you don’t have to miss out. Please mention when you book that you’d like to discuss an alternative meal.

The Pirate Show runs on Friday nights at See Plus Function Centre for six weeks only so book early!

So, to date I have undressed publicly at least 12 times (excluding rehearsals, over the past 2 months). I still have at least another 2 performances to go before our first season is complete – I say this in hope of a second season materialising – and I, and the Socialite, am surprisingly comfortable disrobing for an audience. Sure, there is still the frisson of excitement when I remember that my audience don’t expect this, as I remove my peignoir and camisole, but any reservations about appearances have melted away. I am just doing my job.

However, it struck me over the last few weeks that other people’s reactions to my doing-what-I-am-doing, in the name of theatre, are widely varied. And this puts me in mind of a memorable question from an authority from my past, Professor Julius Sumner Miller:

Most people are equipped with one of two variations on the bits attached to them.

So what makes people fearful of it? OR more particularly, fearful of seeing someone else’s?

Nipples?

REALLY?

The reactions I have encountered are as follows:

Ignore – “If I don’t mention it, it isn’t happening.” – a response common to conservative friends and parents-in-law

Awe – Being a “woman of a certain age” …I rather like this one!

Curiosity – “What does she look like?” “Does she look like me?” “Does she look like I imagined?” “ Is she going to take it…..oo, yes, I think she’s… oh my god, she’s really going to take it off!”

Fascination – “I expected to be confronted, but found myself mesmerised instead.”

Disgust – OK, I made this one up. Not to date anyway (or to my knowledge, anyway).

Seeing another person’s body is not something we are culturally equipped for.

At the beach or in television shows or in magazines or in billboard ads (OK, everywhere), we seem to deal with various degrees of undress, but seeing another REAL human naked RIGHT UP CLOSE is something often associated with private and intimate relationships.

Isn’t it right then that, in a play dealing with sexual relationships, some degree of nudity would be appropriate and genuine and integral?

Oohhhh…. it’s the SEXUAL relationships they don’t want put under scrutiny, yes? And the icky, uncomfortable, basic, not-for-public-consumption feelings they get when they see someone else undress…

Or worse still, that they might never be able to look me in the eye again.

The Maid and The Socialite

After a sell-out season in Noosa, the Mooloolaba season of La Ronde is SOLD OUT

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